FSU soccer earns the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament

The Florida State Seminoles soccer team has earned the No. 1 overall seed in the 2021 NCAA College Cup, with the full bracket being released by the NCAA on Monday.

The ACC and SEC qualified five teams each in the rescheduled tournament,

The Seminoles, who won the ACC Tournament in 2020 during a conference-only season, will face off against the winner of a play-in game featuring Colonial Athletic Association championship Elon and Horizon League champion Milwaukee. The game will kick-off on May 1st at 3pm.

FSU didn’t play any official matches over the spring season, but did face off against the Orlando Pride of the NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League) in a pair of games, winning one and losing the other.

The entirety of the tournament will be played in Cary, North Carolina, where the Seminoles clinched the program’s second title in 2018.

From the official NCAA release:

Twenty-nine conferences were granted automatic bids for the 2020 championship, while the remaining 19 teams were selected at-large. The entire tournament will be held in Cary, North Carolina and the surrounding areas. Games will be held on campus at Campbell, East Carolina and the University of North Carolina Wilmington, in addition to Bryan Park (Greensboro), J. Burt Gillette Athletic Complex (Wilson), Sportsplex (Mathews) and WakeMed Soccer Park (Cary).

The No. 1 overall seed is Florida State, the automatic qualifier out of the Atlantic Coast Conference with an 11-0 record, while North Carolina was the No. 2 seed after finishing the regular season with a 15-1 record and its only blemish coming at the hands of the top-seeded Seminoles.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, Pacific-12 Conference and the Southeastern Conference led all conferences with five teams in the tournament. The Big Ten followed with four representatives in this year’s tournament.

First round action will be played April 27-28, while the second rounds will be held April 30-May 1. The third round will be May 5, with the quarterfinals on May 9.

This will mark the first time the College Cup will feature the Division I men’s and women’s soccer national champions being crowned on the same weekend. The women’s semifinals will be held May 13 with the men’s semifinals following on May 14. The championship games will be played May 17 at Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.

Each of the first four rounds will be available on NCAA.com, while the women’s national semifinals will be broadcast live on ESPN2 and the final will be broadcast live on ESPNU.